.onion is a special-use top level domain suffix designating an anonymous hidden service reachable via the Tor network. Such addresses are not actual DNS names, and the .onion TLD is not in the Internet DNS root, but with the appropriate proxy software installed, Internet programs such as web browsers can access sites with .onion addresses by sending the request through the network of Tor servers. The purpose of using such a system is to make both the information provider and the person accessing the information more difficult to trace, whether by one another, by an intermediate network host, or by an outsider.

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Addresses in the .onion TLD are generally opaque, non-mnemonic, 16-character alpha-semi-numeric hashes which are automatically generated based on a public key when a hidden service is configured. These 16-character hashes can be made up of any letter of the alphabet, and decimal digits from 2 to 7, thus representing an 80-bit number in base32, it is possible to set up a human-readable .onion URL (e.g. starting with an organization name) by generating massive numbers of key pairs (a computational process that can be parallelized) until a sufficiently desirable URL is found.[2][3]

Proxies into the Tor network like Tor2web allow access to hidden services from non-Tor browsers and for search engines that are not Tor-aware. By using a gateway, users give up their own anonymity and trust the gateway to deliver the correct content. Both the gateway and the hidden service can fingerprint the browser, and access user IP address data, some proxies use caching techniques to provide better page-loading[4] than the official Tor Browser.[5]

.exit is a pseudo-top-level domain used by Tor users to indicate on the fly to the Tor software the preferred exit node that should be used while connecting to a service such as a web server, without having to edit the configuration file for Tor (torrc).

The syntax used with this domain is hostname + .exitnode + .exit, so that a user wanting to connect to http://www.torproject.org/ through node tor26 would have to enter the URL http://www.torproject.org.tor26.exit.

Example uses for this include accessing a site available only to addresses of a certain country or checking if a certain node is working.

Users can also type exitnode.exit alone to access the IP address of exitnode.

The .exit notation is deprecated as of version 0.2.9.8.[6] It is disabled by default as of version 0.2.2.1-alpha due to potential application-level attacks.[7]

SSL stripping attacks from malicious exit nodes on the Tor network are a risk to users accessing traditional HTTPS clearnet sites. Sites offering dedicated .onion addresses can provide an additional layer of identity assurance via certificates, though the encryption itself is technically redundant, given Tor's native encryption features.[11] Provision of HTTPS certificates also enables browser features which would otherwise be unavailable to users of .onion sites.

Prior to the adoption of CA/Browser Forum Ballot 144, a HTTPS certificate for a .onion name could only be acquired by treating .onion as an Internal Server Name.[12] Per the CA/Browser Forum's Baseline Requirements, these certificates could be issued, but were required to expire before 1 November 2015,[13] despite these restrictions, four organizations went ahead with certificate authority partnerships to do so; these were DuckDuckGo in July 2013,[14]Facebook in October 2014,[15]Blockchain.info in December 2014,[16]The Intercept in April 2015,[17] and The New York Times in October 2017.[18]

Following the adoption of CA/Browser Forum Ballot 144 and the designation of the domain as 'special use' in September 2015, .onion meets the criteria for RFC 6761.[19] Certificate authorities may issue SSL certificates for HTTPS .onion sites per the process documented in the CA/Browser Forum's Baseline Requirements,[20] introduced in Ballot 144.[12]

As of August 2016, 13 onion domains are https signed across 7 different organisations via DigiCert.[21]

1.
Tor (anonymity network)
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Tor is free software for enabling anonymous communication. The name is derived from an acronym for the software project name The Onion Router. Using Tor makes it difficult for Internet activity to be traced back to the user, this includes visits to Web sites, online posts, instant messages. Tors use is intended to protect the privacy of users, as well as their freedom. Onion routing is implemented by encryption in the layer of a communication protocol stack. Tor encrypts the data, including the next node destination IP address, multiple times and sends it through a circuit comprising successive. Each relay decrypts a layer of encryption to reveal only the relay in the circuit in order to pass the remaining encrypted data on to it. The final relay decrypts the innermost layer of encryption and sends the data to its destination without revealing, or even knowing. An adversary might try to de-anonymize the user by some means, one way this may be achieved is by exploiting vulnerable software on the users computer. Attacks against Tor are an area of academic research, and are welcomed by the Tor Project itself. Onion routing was developed by DARPA in 1997. The alpha version of Tor, developed by Syverson and computer scientists Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson and then called The Onion Routing project, or TOR project, the first public release occurred a year later. On 13 August 2004, Syverson, Dingledine and Mathewson presented Tor, in 2004, the Naval Research Laboratory released the code for Tor under a free license, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation began funding Dingledine and Mathewson to continue its development. In December 2006, Dingledine, Mathewson and five others founded The Tor Project, from this period onwards, the majority of funding sources came from the U. S. government. In November 2014 there was speculation in the aftermath of Operation Onymous that a Tor weakness has been exploited, a representative of Europol was secretive about the method used, saying, This is something we want to keep for ourselves. The way we do this, we share with the whole world. This possibility was downplayed by Andrew Lewman, a representative of the not-for-profit Tor project, however, in November 2015 court documents on the matter generated serious ethical security research as well as Fourth Amendment concerns. In December 2015, The Tor Project announced that it had hired Shari Steele as its new executive director, Steele had previously led the Electronic Frontier Foundation for 15 years, and in 2004 spearheaded EFFs decision to fund Tors early development

2.
Domain Name System
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The Domain Name System is a hierarchical decentralized naming system for computers, services, or other resources connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities, by providing a worldwide, distributed directory service, the Domain Name System is an essential component of the functionality of the Internet, that has been in use since 1985. The Domain Name System delegates the responsibility of assigning domain names, Network administrators may delegate authority over sub-domains of their allocated name space to other name servers. This mechanism provides distributed and fault tolerant service and was designed to avoid a large central database. The Domain Name System also specifies the technical functionality of the service that is at its core. It defines the DNS protocol, a specification of the data structures and data communication exchanges used in the DNS. Historically, other directory services preceding DNS were not scalable to large or global directories as they were based on text files. The Internet maintains two principal namespaces, the domain name hierarchy and the Internet Protocol address spaces, the Domain Name System maintains the domain name hierarchy and provides translation services between it and the address spaces. Internet name servers and a communication protocol implement the Domain Name System, a DNS name server is a server that stores the DNS records for a domain, a DNS name server responds with answers to queries against its database. The most common types of stored in the DNS database are for Start of Authority, IP addresses, SMTP mail exchangers, name servers, pointers for reverse DNS lookups. As a general purpose database, the DNS has also used in combating unsolicited email by storing a real-time blackhole list. The DNS database is stored in a structured zone file. An often-used analogy to explain the Domain Name System is that it serves as the book for the Internet by translating human-friendly computer hostnames into IP addresses. For example, the name www. example. com translates to the addresses 93.184.216.119 and 2606,2800,220, 6d, 26bf,1447,1097. Unlike a phone book, DNS can be updated, allowing a services location on the network to change without affecting the end users. Users take advantage of this when they use meaningful Uniform Resource Locators, an important and ubiquitous function of DNS is its central role in distributed Internet services such as cloud services and content delivery networks. When a user accesses a distributed Internet service using a URL and this process of using the DNS to assign proximal servers to users is key to providing faster and more reliable responses on the Internet and is widely used by most major Internet services. The DNS reflects the structure of administrative responsibility in the Internet, each subdomain is a zone of administrative autonomy delegated to a manager

3.
Web browser
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A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier that may be a web page, image, hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. Although browsers are primarily intended to use the World Wide Web, the most popular web browsers are Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari, Opera and Firefox. The first web browser was invented in 1990 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which oversees the Webs continued development, and is also the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation. His browser was called WorldWideWeb and later renamed Nexus, the first commonly available web browser with a graphical user interface was Erwise. The development of Erwise was initiated by Robert Cailliau, andreesens browser sparked the internet boom of the 1990s. The introduction of Mosaic in 1993 – one of the first graphical web browsers – led to an explosion in web use, Microsoft responded with its Internet Explorer in 1995, also heavily influenced by Mosaic, initiating the industrys first browser war. Bundled with Windows, Internet Explorer gained dominance in the web browser market, Internet Explorer usage share peaked at over 95% by 2002. Opera debuted in 1996, it has never achieved widespread use and it is also available on several other embedded systems, including Nintendos Wii video game console. In 1998, Netscape launched what was to become the Mozilla Foundation in an attempt to produce a competitive browser using the open source software model, as of August 2011, Firefox has a 28% usage share. Apples Safari had its first beta release in January 2003, as of April 2011, the most recent major entrant to the browser market is Chrome, first released in September 2008. Chromes take-up has increased year by year, by doubling its usage share from 8% to 16% by August 2011. This increase seems largely to be at the expense of Internet Explorer, in December 2011, Chrome overtook Internet Explorer 8 as the most widely used web browser but still had lower usage than all versions of Internet Explorer combined. Chromes user-base continued to grow and in May 2012, Chromes usage passed the usage of all versions of Internet Explorer combined, by April 2014, Chromes usage had hit 45%. Internet Explorer was deprecated in Windows 10, with Microsoft Edge replacing it as the web browser. The ways that web browser makers fund their development costs has changed over time, the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, was a research project. In addition to being freeware, Netscape Navigator and Opera were also sold commercially, Internet Explorer, on the other hand, was bundled free with the Windows operating system, and therefore it was funded partly by the sales of Windows to computer manufacturers and direct to users. Internet Explorer also used to be available for the Mac, in this respect, IE may have contributed to Windows and Microsoft applications sales in another way, through lock-in to Microsofts browser

4.
Mnemonic
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A mnemonic device, or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention in the human memory. Mnemonics make use of encoding, retrieval cues, and imagery as specific tools to encode any given information in a way that allows for efficient storage. Mnemonics aid original information in becoming associated with something more meaningful—which, in turn, the word mnemonic is derived from the Ancient Greek word μνημονικός, meaning of memory, or relating to memory and is related to Mnemosyne, the name of the goddess of memory in Greek mythology. Both of these words are derived from μνήμη, remembrance, memory, mnemonics in antiquity were most often considered in the context of what is today known as the art of memory. Ancient Greeks and Romans distinguished between two types of memory, the memory and the artificial memory. The former is inborn, and is the one that everyone uses instinctively, the latter in contrast has to be trained and developed through the learning and practice of a variety of mnemonic techniques. Mnemonic systems are techniques or strategies consciously used to improve memory and they help use information already stored in long-term memory to make memorisation an easier task. Mnemonic devices were much cultivated by Greek sophists and philosophers and are referred to by Plato. In later times the poet Simonides was credited for development of these techniques, the Romans valued such helps in order to support facility in public speaking. The Greek and the Roman system of mnemonics was founded on the use of mental places and signs or pictures, to recall these, an individual had only to search over the apartments of the house until discovering the places where images had been placed by the imagination. Except that the rules of mnemonics are referred to by Martianus Capella, among the voluminous writings of Roger Bacon is a tractate De arte memorativa. Ramon Llull devoted special attention to mnemonics in connection with his ars generalis, about the end of the 15th century, Petrus de Ravenna provoked such astonishment in Italy by his mnemonic feats that he was believed by many to be a necromancer. His Phoenix artis memoriae went through as many as nine editions, about the end of the 16th century, Lambert Schenkel, who taught mnemonics in France, Italy and Germany, similarly surprised people with his memory. He was denounced as a sorcerer by the University of Louvain, the most complete account of his system is given in two works by his pupil Martin Sommer, published in Venice in 1619. In 1618 John Willis published Mnemonica, sive ars reminiscendi, containing a statement of the principles of topical or local mnemonics. Giordano Bruno included a memoria technica in his treatise De umbris idearum, other writers of this period are the Florentine Publicius, Johannes Romberch, Hieronimo Morafiot, Ars memoriae, and B. The philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz adopted a very similar to that of Wennsshein for his scheme of a form of writing common to all languages. Wennssheins method was adopted with slight changes afterward by the majority of subsequent original systems and it was modified and supplemented by Richard Grey, a priest who published a Memoria technica in 1730

5.
Public-key cryptography
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In a public key encryption system, any person can encrypt a message using the public key of the receiver, but such a message can be decrypted only with the receivers private key. For this to work it must be easy for a user to generate a public. The strength of a public key cryptography system relies on the degree of difficulty for a properly generated private key to be determined from its public key. Security then depends only on keeping the key private. Public key algorithms, unlike symmetric key algorithms, do not require a secure channel for the exchange of one secret keys between the parties. Because of the complexity of asymmetric encryption, it is usually used only for small blocks of data. This symmetric key is used to encrypt the rest of the potentially long message sequence. The symmetric encryption/decryption is based on algorithms and is much faster. In a public key system, a person can combine a message with a private key to create a short digital signature on the message. Thus the authenticity of a message can be demonstrated by the signature, Public key algorithms are fundamental security ingredients in cryptosystems, applications and protocols. They underpin various Internet standards, such as Transport Layer Security, S/MIME, PGP, some public key algorithms provide key distribution and secrecy, some provide digital signatures, and some provide both. Public key cryptography finds application in, among others, the information technology security discipline, information security is concerned with all aspects of protecting electronic information assets against security threats. Public key cryptography is used as a method of assuring the confidentiality, authenticity and non-repudiability of electronic communications, two of the best-known uses of public key cryptography are, Public key encryption, in which a message is encrypted with a recipients public key. The message cannot be decrypted by anyone who does not possess the matching private key, who is presumed to be the owner of that key. This is used in an attempt to ensure confidentiality, digital signatures, in which a message is signed with the senders private key and can be verified by anyone who has access to the senders public key. This verification proves that the sender had access to the private key, an analogy to public key encryption is that of a locked mail box with a mail slot. The mail slot is exposed and accessible to the public – its location is, in essence, anyone knowing the street address can go to the door and drop a written message through the slot. However, only the person who possesses the key can open the mailbox, an analogy for digital signatures is the sealing of an envelope with a personal wax seal

6.
Parallelized
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Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or the execution of processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time, there are several different forms of parallel computing, bit-level, instruction-level, data, and task parallelism. Parallelism has been employed for years, mainly in high-performance computing. As power consumption by computers has become a concern in recent years, parallel computing has become the dominant paradigm in computer architecture, specialized parallel computer architectures are sometimes used alongside traditional processors, for accelerating specific tasks. Communication and synchronization between the different subtasks are typically some of the greatest obstacles to getting good parallel program performance, a theoretical upper bound on the speed-up of a single program as a result of parallelization is given by Amdahls law. Traditionally, computer software has been written for serial computation, to solve a problem, an algorithm is constructed and implemented as a serial stream of instructions. These instructions are executed on a central processing unit on one computer, only one instruction may execute at a time—after that instruction is finished, the next one is executed. Parallel computing, on the hand, uses multiple processing elements simultaneously to solve a problem. This is accomplished by breaking the problem into independent parts so that each processing element can execute its part of the algorithm simultaneously with the others. The processing elements can be diverse and include such as a single computer with multiple processors, several networked computers, specialized hardware. Frequency scaling was the dominant reason for improvements in performance from the mid-1980s until 2004. The runtime of a program is equal to the number of instructions multiplied by the time per instruction. Maintaining everything else constant, increasing the frequency decreases the average time it takes to execute an instruction. An increase in frequency thus decreases runtime for all compute-bound programs. However, power consumption P by a chip is given by the equation P = C × V2 × F, where C is the capacitance being switched per clock cycle, V is voltage, increases in frequency increase the amount of power used in a processor. Moores law is the observation that the number of transistors in a microprocessor doubles every 18 to 24 months. Despite power consumption issues, and repeated predictions of its end, with the end of frequency scaling, these additional transistors can be used to add extra hardware for parallel computing. Optimally, the speedup from parallelization would be linear—doubling the number of processing elements should halve the runtime, however, very few parallel algorithms achieve optimal speedup

7.
Onion routing
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Onion routing is a technique for anonymous communication over a computer network. In an onion network, messages are encapsulated in layers of encryption, the encrypted data is transmitted through a series of network nodes called onion routers, each of which peels away a single layer, uncovering the datas next destination. When the final layer is decrypted, the message arrives at its destination, the sender remains anonymous because each intermediary knows only the location of the immediately preceding and following nodes. Onion routing was developed in the mid-1990s at the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory by employees Paul Syverson, Michael G. Reed and it was further developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and patented by the Navy in 1998. To create and transmit an onion, the originator selects a set of nodes from a list provided by a directory node, the chosen nodes are arranged into a path, called a chain or circuit, through which the message will be transmitted. To preserve the anonymity of the sender, no node in the circuit is able to tell whether the node before it is the originator or another intermediary like itself. Likewise, no node in the circuit is able to tell how many other nodes are in the circuit and only the final node, the exit node, is able to determine its own location in the chain. Using asymmetric key cryptography, the originator obtains a public key from the node to send an encrypted message to the first node, establishing a connection. When the second node receives the message, it establishes a connection with the first node, while this extends the encrypted link from the originator, the second node cannot determine whether the first node is the originator or just another node in the circuit. The originator can send a message through the first and second nodes to a third node. The third, as with the second, becomes linked to the originator and this process can be repeated to build larger and larger chains, but is typically limited to preserve performance. When the chain is complete, the originator can send data over the Internet anonymously, one of the reasons typical Internet connections are not considered anonymous is the ability of Internet service providers to trace and log connections between computers. Traffic analysis searches those records of connections made by a potential originator and tries to match timing, factors that may facilitate traffic analysis include nodes failing or leaving the network and a compromised node keeping track of a session as it occurs when chains are periodically rebuilt. A compromised exit node is able to acquire the raw data being transmitted, potentially including passwords, private messages, bank account numbers. Dan Egerstad, a Swedish researcher, used such an attack to collect the passwords of over 100 email accounts related to foreign embassies. Exit node vulnerabilities are similar to those on unsecured wireless networks, both issues are solved by using a secure end-to-end connection like SSL or secure HTTP. If there is end-to-end encryption between the sender and the recipient, then not even the last intermediary can view the original message, IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. CiteSeerX,10.1.1.64.4829 - The original paper from the Naval Research Laboratory

8.
Anonymity
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Anonymity, adjective anonymous, is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning without a name or namelessness. In colloquial use, anonymous is used to describe situations where the persons name is unknown. Some writers have argued that namelessness, though correct, does not capture what is more centrally at stake in contexts of anonymity. The important idea here is that a person be non-identifiable, unreachable, Anonymity is seen as a technique, or a way of realizing, certain other values, such as privacy, or liberty. An important example for anonymity being not only protected, but enforced by law is probably the vote in free elections, in many other situations, anonymity is traditionally accepted as natural. There are also situations in which a person might choose to withhold their identity. Acts of charity have been performed anonymously when benefactors do not wish to be acknowledged, a person who feels threatened might attempt to mitigate that threat through anonymity. A witness to a crime might seek to avoid retribution, for example, criminals might proceed anonymously to conceal their participation in a crime. Anonymity may also be created unintentionally, through the loss of identifying information due to the passage of time or a destructive event, in certain situations, however, it may be illegal to remain anonymous. In the United States,24 states have “stop and identify” statutes that requires persons detained to self-identify when requested by a law enforcement officer, in Germany, people have to indicate their names at the door of their homes. The term anonymous message typically refers to a message that does not reveal its sender, in many countries, anonymous letters are protected by law and must be delivered as regular letters. In mathematics, in reference to an element, within a well-defined set. If it is not identifiable, then the element is said to be anonymous, sometimes it is desired that a person can establish a long-term relationship with some other entity, without necessarily disclosing personally identifying information to that entity. In this case, it may be useful for the person to establish a unique identifier, called a pseudonym, examples of pseudonyms are pen names, nicknames, credit card numbers, student numbers, bank account numbers, etc. A pseudonym enables the other entity to link different messages from the person and, thereby. Pseudonyms are widely used in networks and other virtual communication. This can have effects, both useful and harmful to various parties and/or entities involved, relatively. Thus, it may be used for psychological tactics involving any respective party to purport and/or support and/or discredit any sort of activity or belief, in conversational settings, anonymity may allow people to reveal personal history and feelings without fear of later embarrassment

9.
Tor2web
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Tor2web is a software project to allow Tor hidden services to be accessed from a standard browser without being connected to the Tor network. It was created by Aaron Swartz and Virgil Griffith, the software developed by Swartz and Griffith is today considered version 1.0. Version 2.0 was released in August 2011, and version 3.0 is in beta as of December 2014. Rather than typical top-level domains like. com. org, or. net, Tor2web acts as a specialized proxy or middleman between hidden services and users, making them visible to people who are not connected to Tor. To do so, a user takes the URL of a hidden service, like Tor, Tor2web operates using servers run voluntarily by an open community of individuals and organizations. Tor2web preserves the anonymity of content publishers but is not itself an anonymity tool, since version 2.0, a privacy and security warning is added to the header of each web page it fetches, encouraging readers to use the Tor Browser Bundle to obtain anonymity. Dark web GlobaLeaks Official website Tor2web-3.0 on GitHub Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights Quick thoughts on tor2web

10.
World Wide Web
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The World Wide Web is an information space where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators, interlinked by hypertext links, and can be accessed via the Internet. English scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 and he wrote the first web browser computer program in 1990 while employed at CERN in Switzerland. The Web browser was released outside of CERN in 1991, first to research institutions starting in January 1991. The World Wide Web has been central to the development of the Information Age and is the primary tool billions of people use to interact on the Internet, Web pages are primarily text documents formatted and annotated with Hypertext Markup Language. In addition to formatted text, web pages may contain images, video, audio, embedded hyperlinks permit users to navigate between web pages. Multiple web pages with a theme, a common domain name. Website content can largely be provided by the publisher, or interactive where users contribute content or the content depends upon the user or their actions, websites may be mostly informative, primarily for entertainment, or largely for commercial, governmental, or non-governmental organisational purposes. In the 2006 Great British Design Quest organised by the BBC and the Design Museum, Tim Berners-Lees vision of a global hyperlinked information system became a possibility by the second half of the 1980s. By 1985, the global Internet began to proliferate in Europe, in 1988 the first direct IP connection between Europe and North America was made and Berners-Lee began to openly discuss the possibility of a web-like system at CERN. Such a system, he explained, could be referred to using one of the meanings of the word hypertext. At this point HTML and HTTP had already been in development for two months and the first Web server was about a month from completing its first successful test. While the read-only goal was met, accessible authorship of web content took longer to mature, with the concept, WebDAV, blogs, Web 2.0. The proposal was modelled after the SGML reader Dynatext by Electronic Book Technology, a NeXT Computer was used by Berners-Lee as the worlds first web server and also to write the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, in 1990. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the necessary for a working Web, the first web browser. The first web site, which described the project itself, was published on 20 December 1990, jones stored it on a magneto-optical drive and on his NeXT computer. On 6 August 1991, Berners-Lee published a summary of the World Wide Web project on the newsgroup alt. hypertext. This date is confused with the public availability of the first web servers. The first server outside Europe was installed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Palo Alto, California, accounts differ substantially as to the date of this event

11.
ICANN
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ICANN performs the actual technical maintenance work of the central Internet address pools and DNS root zone registries pursuant to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority function contract. The numbering facilities ICANN manages include the Internet Protocol address spaces for IPv4 and IPv6, ICANN also maintains registries of Internet Protocol identifiers. ICANN was created on September 18,1998, and incorporated on September 30,1998 and it is headquartered in the Playa Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles. In 1997 Postel testified before Congress that this had come about as a task to this research work. The Information Sciences Institute was funded by the U. S. Department of Defense, as was SRI Internationals Network Information Center, which also performed some assigned name functions. As the Internet grew and expanded globally, the U. S. Department of Commerce initiated a process to establish a new organization to perform the IANA functions. The proposed rule making, or Green Paper, was published in the Federal Register on February 20,1998, NTIA received more than 650 comments as of March 23,1998, when the comment period closed. ICANN was formed in response to this policy, ICANN managed the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority under contract to the United States Department of Commerce and pursuant to an agreement with the IETF. ICANN was incorporated in California on September 30,1998, with entrepreneur and it is a nonprofit public benefit corporation organized under the California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law for charitable and public purposes. ICANN was established in California due to the presence of Jon Postel, ICANN formerly operated from the same Marina del Rey building where Postel formerly worked, which is home to an office of the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California. However, ICANNs headquarters is now located in the nearby Playa Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles and they were also required to be financially independent from ICANN. On July 26,2006, the United States government renewed the contract with ICANN for performance of the IANA function for a one to five years. The context of ICANNs relationship with the U. S. government was clarified on September 29,2006 when ICANN signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with the United States Department of Commerce and this document gave the DOC oversight over some of the ICANN operations. During July 2008, the DOC reiterated a statement that it has no plans to transition management of the authoritative root zone file to ICANN. The letter also stresses the separate roles of the IANA and VeriSign, on September 30,2009, ICANN signed an agreement with the DOC that confirmed ICANNs commitment to a multistakeholder governance model, but did not remove it from DOC oversight and control. On March 10,2016, ICANN and the DOC signed a historic, culminating agreement to finally remove ICANN and IANA from the control, on October 1,2016, ICANN was freed from U. S. government oversight. During September and October 2003, ICANN played a role in the conflict over VeriSigns wild card DNS service Site Finder. After an open letter from ICANN issuing an ultimatum to VeriSign, later endorsed by the Internet Architecture Board, after this action, VeriSign filed a lawsuit against ICANN on February 27,2004, claiming that ICANN had exceeded its authority

12.
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
–
Following ICANNs transition to a global multistakeholder governance model, the IANA functions were transferred to Public Technical Identifiers, an affiliate of ICANN. In addition, five regional Internet registries delegate number resources to their customers, local Internet registries, Internet service providers, a local Internet registry is an organization that assigns parts of its allocation from a regional Internet registry to other customers. Most local Internet registries are also Internet service providers, IANA is broadly responsible for the allocation of globally unique names and numbers that are used in Internet protocols that are published as Request for Comments documents. These documents describe methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet, IANA maintains a close liaison with the Internet Engineering Task Force and RFC Editorial team in fulfilling this function. IANA is responsible for assignment of Internet numbers which are numerical identifier assigned to an Internet resource or used in the protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. Examples include IP addresses and autonomous system numbers, IANA delegates allocations of IP address blocks to regional Internet registries. Each RIR allocates addresses for a different area of the world, collectively the RIRs have created the Number Resource Organization formed as a body to represent their collective interests and ensure that policy statements are coordinated globally. The RIRs divide their allocated address pools into smaller blocks and delegate them to Internet service providers, since the exhaustion of the Internet Protocol Version 4 address space, no further IPv4 address space is allocated by IANA. IANA administers the data in the root nameservers, which form the top of the hierarchical Domain name system tree and this task involves liaising with top-level domain operators, the root nameserver operators, and ICANNs policy making apparatus. IANA administers many parameters of IETF protocols, examples include the names of uniform resource identifier schemes and character encodings recommended for use on the Internet. This task is performed under the oversight of the Internet Architecture Board, on March 26,1972, Vint Cerf and Jon Postel at UCLA called for establishing a socket number catalog in RFC322. Network administrators were asked to submit a note or place a call, describing the function. This catalog was published as RFC433 in December 1972. In it Postel first proposed a registry of assignments of port numbers to network services, calling himself the czar of socket numbers. The first reference to the name IANA in the RFC series is in RFC1083, published in December,1988 by Postel at USC-ISI, there was widespread dissatisfaction with this concentration of power in one company, and people looked to IANA for a solution. Postel wrote up a draft on IANA and the creation of new top level domains and he was trying to institutionalize IANA. In retrospect, this would have been valuable, since he died about two years later. Jon Postel managed the IANA function from its inception on the ARPANET until his death in October 1998, by his almost 30 years of selfless service, Postel created his de facto authority to manage key parts of the Internet infrastructure

13.
IETF
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The Internet Engineering Task Force develops and promotes voluntary Internet standards, in particular the standards that comprise the Internet protocol suite. It is a standards organization, with no formal membership or membership requirements. All participants and managers are volunteers, though their work is funded by their employers or sponsors. Each working group has a chairperson, along with a charter that describes its focus, and what. It is open to all who want to participate, and holds discussions on a mailing list or at IETF meetings. Rough consensus is the basis for decision making. There are no formal voting procedures, because the majority of the IETFs work is done via mailing lists, meeting attendance is not required for contributors. Each working group is intended to work on its topic. In some cases, the WG will instead have its charter updated to take on new tasks as appropriate, the working groups are organized into areas by subject matter. Current areas are Applications, General, Internet, Operations and Management, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure, Routing, Security, each area is overseen by an area director, with most areas having two co-ADs. The ADs are responsible for appointing working group chairs, the area directors, together with the IETF Chair, form the Internet Engineering Steering Group, which is responsible for the overall operation of the IETF. The IETF is overseen by the Internet Architecture Board, which oversees its external relationships, the IAB is also jointly responsible for the IETF Administrative Oversight Committee, which oversees the IETF Administrative Support Activity, which provides logistical, etc. support for the IETF. The IAB also manages the Internet Research Task Force, with which the IETF has a number of cross-group relations. A Nominating Committee of ten randomly chosen volunteers who participate regularly at meetings is vested with the power to appoint, reappoint, and remove members of the IESG, IAB, IASA, and the IAOC. To date, no one has been removed by a NomCom, although people have resigned their positions. Because the IETF itself does not have members, nor is it an organization per se, IETF activities are funded by meeting fees, meeting sponsors and by the Internet Society via its organizational membership and the proceeds of the Public Interest Registry. In December 2005 the IETF Trust was established to manage the copyrighted materials produced by the IETF, the first IETF meeting was attended by 21 U. S. -government-funded researchers on 16 January 1986. It was a continuation of the work of the earlier GADS Task Force, representatives from non-governmental entities were invited to attend starting with the fourth IETF meeting in October 1986

14.
Jacob Appelbaum
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Jacob Appelbaum is an American independent journalist, computer security researcher, artist, and hacker. He has been employed by the University of Washington, and was a member of the Tor project. Appelbaum is also known for representing WikiLeaks and he has displayed his art in a number of institutions across the world and has collaborated with artists such as Laura Poitras, Trevor Paglen, and Ai Weiwei. His journalistic work has been published in Der Spiegel and elsewhere, under the handle ioerror, Appelbaum was an active member of the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective from 2008 to 2016. He was the co-founder of the San Francisco hackerspace Noisebridge with Mitch Altman, with several others, he co-founded the Seattle Privacy Coalition, an advocacy group. He worked for Kink. com and Greenpeace, and volunteered for the Ruckus Society, the Tor Project and several other organizations ended their association with Appelbaum in June 2016 following several allegations of sexual abuse. Various activists and others have publicly supported Appelbaum, voicing concerns about due process, trial by social media, the affair has had repercussions in the on-line privacy advocacy world. While U. S. news media have treated the allegations as credible, reporting in Germany, no legal action has been taken by either Appelbaum or any accuser. Appelbaum says that he tested out of school and attended junior college briefly before he stopped college. In a wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 2010, Appelbaum revealed that I come from a family of lunatics and he stated that his mother is a paranoid schizophrenic. She insisted that Jake had somehow been molested by his father while he was still in the womb and he was taken away from his mother by his aunt when he was 6. Two years later, he was placed in a home in Sonoma County. At age 10, his indigent father was awarded custody of him, having been introduced to computer programming by a friends father, Appelbaum said, saved his life. The Internet is the only reason Im alive today, as of 1 September 2015, Appelbaum is a Ph. D. student studying under Tanja Lange and Daniel J. Bernstein at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Appelbaum was among people to gain access to former NSA contractor Edward Snowdens top secret documents released in 2013. He has contributed extensively as a journalist to the publication of those documents, US President Barack Obama issued an ambiguously worded denial and apology. The BBC commented that This scandal has caused one of the biggest diplomatic rifts between Germany and the U. S. in recent years, at the scandals peak, Merkel compared the National Security Agency with the East German Stasi secret police during an angry conversation with Obama. The Der Spiegel teams reporting about Merkel earned the 2014 Henri Nannen prize for investigative journalism, Appelbaum shared the prize with Der Spiegel writers and editors Marcel Rosenbach, Jörg Schindler, and Holger Stark

15.
Facebook
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Facebook is an American for-profit corporation and an online social media and social networking service based in Menlo Park, California. Facebook gradually added support for students at other universities. Since 2006, anyone age 13 and older has been allowed to become a user of Facebook, though variations exist in the minimum age requirement. The Facebook name comes from the face book directories often given to United States university students, Facebook may be accessed by a large range of desktops, laptops, tablet computers, and smartphones over the Internet and mobile networks. After registering to use the site, users can create a user profile indicating their name, occupation, schools attended and so on. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups organized by workplace, school, hobbies or other topics, in groups, editors can pin posts to top. Additionally, users can complain about or block unpleasant people, because of the large volume of data that users submit to the service, Facebook has come under scrutiny for its privacy policies. Facebook makes most of its revenue from advertisements which appear onscreen, Facebook, Inc. held its initial public offering in February 2012, and began selling stock to the public three months later, reaching an original peak market capitalization of $104 billion. On July 13,2015, Facebook became the fastest company in the Standard & Poors 500 Index to reach a market cap of $250 billion, Facebook has more than 1.86 billion monthly active users as of December 31,2016. As of April 2016, Facebook was the most popular social networking site in the world, Facebook classifies users from the ages of 13 to 18 as minors and therefore sets their profiles to share content with friends only. Zuckerberg wrote a program called Facemash on October 28,2003 while attending Harvard University as a sophomore, to accomplish this, Zuckerberg hacked into protected areas of Harvards computer network and copied private dormitory ID images. Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online, the site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers, but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg faced expulsion and was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final exam. He uploaded 500 Augustan images to a website, each of which was featured with a corresponding comments section and he shared the site with his classmates, and people started sharing notes. The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website in January 2004 and he said that he was inspired by an editorial about the Facemash incident in The Harvard Crimson. On February 4,2004, Zuckerberg launched Thefacebook, originally located at thefacebook. com. com and they claimed that he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product. The three complained to The Harvard Crimson and the newspaper began an investigation and they later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling in 2008 for 1.2 million shares. Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, within the first month, eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website

16.
Alec Muffett
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Alec David Edward Muffett is an American internet-security evangelist, architect, and software engineer. He is principally known for his work on Crack, the original Unix password cracker and he worked as a Software Engineer for Facebook. Alec Muffett was born in Pennsylvania, the child, and only son, of David Joseph Mead Muffett and Kathleen Jubb, his sisters are Louise. Alec was educated at Sacred Heart College, Droitwich and University College London, after graduation he commenced work as a lab assistant and Unix administrator at the university. In 1988 he took a position as Systems Programmer at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth and he was active on the Zardoz list during this period. Muffett joined Sun Microsystems in 1992, working initially as a systems administrator and he rose “through the ranks” to become the Principal Engineer for Security, a position which he held until he was retrenched, with many others, in 2009. While at Sun he was one of the researchers who worked on the factorization of the 512 bit RSA Challenge Number, Muffett also worked on the Sun MD5 hash algorithm, which was introduced in Solaris 9 update 2. The new algorithm drew on Muffetts work in pluggable crypt, and it is now implemented in different languages. The algorithm uses the text of the famous soliloquy from Shakespeares Hamlet, To be or not to be. Muffett justified the choice of this text because it exposes more programmers to Shakespeare, after a sabbatical year, Muffett began to work on The Mine. He subsequently became a director and consultant at Green Lane Security and he became a director of the Open Rights Group in October 2011. Muffett is the a co-inventor of the patent Method and apparatus for implementing a pluggable password obscuring mechanism, United States Patent 7,249,260, Issued June 12,2003. Muffetts father, David, was a former British Colonial Administrator in Africa, big game hunter, alec Muffett lives in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, England

17.
Moxie Marlinspike
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Moxie Marlinspike is an American computer security researcher and cypherpunk. His research has focused primarily on techniques for intercepting communication, as well as methods for strengthening communication infrastructure against interception, Marlinspike is the former head of the security team at Twitter and founder of Open Whisper Systems. He is the author of a proposed SSL authentication system replacement called Convergence, co-author of the Signal Protocol, and he runs a cloud-based WPA cracking service and manages a targeted anonymity service called GoogleSharing. Originally from the state of Georgia, Marlinspike moved to San Francisco in the late 1990s and he then worked for several technology companies, including enterprise infrastructure software maker BEA Systems Inc. In 2010, Marlinspike was the technology officer and co-founder of Whisper Systems. In May 2010, Whisper Systems launched TextSecure and RedPhone and these were applications that provided end-to-end encrypted SMS messaging and voice calling, respectively. The company was acquired by the social-media firm Twitter for an amount in late 2011. The acquisition was primarily so that Mr. Marlinspike could help the then-startup improve its security. During his time as head of cybersecurity at Twitter, the firm made Whisper Systems apps open source, Marlinspike left Twitter in early 2013 and founded Open Whisper Systems as a collaborative open source project for the continued development of TextSecure and RedPhone. At the time, Marlinspike and Trevor Perrin started developing the Signal Protocol, in November 2015, Open Whisper Systems unified the TextSecure and RedPhone applications as Signal. Between 2014 and 2016, Marlinspike worked with WhatsApp, Facebook and he also announced the release of a tool, sslstrip, which would automatically perform these types of man-in-the-middle attacks. The HTTP Strict Transport Security specification was developed to combat these attacks. Marlinspike has discovered a number of different vulnerabilities in popular SSL implementations, notably, Marlinspike published a 2002 paper on exploiting SSL/TLS implementations that did not correctly verify the X.509 v3 BasicConstraints extension in public key certificate chains. This allowed anyone with a valid CA-signed certificate for any name to create what appeared to be valid CA-signed certificates for any other domain. In 2011, the vulnerability was discovered to have remained present in the SSL/TLS implementation on Apple Inc. s iOS. Also notably, Marlinspike presented a 2009 paper, where he introduced the concept of an attack on SSL certificates. In 2011, Marlinspike presented a talk titled SSL And The Future Of Authenticity at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas and he outlined many of the current problems with certificate authorities, and announced the release of a software project called Convergence to replace Certificate Authorities. In 2012, Marlinspike and Trevor Perrin submitted an Internet Draft for TACK, in 2012, Marlinspike and David Hulton presented research that makes it possible to reduce the security of MS-CHAPv2 handshakes to a single DES encryption

18.
CA/Browser Forum
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Its guidelines cover certificates used for the SSL/TLS protocol and code signing, as well as system and network security of certificate authorities. The CA/Browser Forum maintains “Guidelines For The Issuance And Management Of Extended Validation Certificates”, the EV SSL standard improves security for Internet transactions and creates a more intuitive method of displaying secure sites to Internet users. In order for authorities to issue EV SSL Certificates, they must be audited for compliance with the Forums EV Guidelines in accordance with either WebTrust or ETSI audit criteria. The CA/Browser Forum adopted the Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly-Trusted Certificates in 2011 and these Guidelines, which are binding on members of the CA/Browser Forum, took effect July 1,2012. These guidelines cover all CA-issued certificates, Certificates are now classified as DV, OV, IV, and EV, and a method is defined within the specification to distinguish the types of certificates. In 2005, Melih Abdulhayoglu of the Comodo Group organized and arranged the first meeting of CA/Browser Forum, the first meeting was held in New York City. Version 1.0 of the EV Guidelines was adopted on 7 June 2007, version 1.1 was adopted by the CA/Browser Forum on 10 April 2008. Version 1.2 was adopted by the CA/Browser Forum on 1 Oct 2009 and it is a great step forward in establishing verified identity for websites considers MSDN in its blog post. Also, Microsofts vision is that the backbone of an Internet identity system is composed of Extended Validation SSL Certificates intimately integrated with the browsing experience. The tougher certificates, coupled with browser developments, could help fight phishing, in November 2011, the CA/Browser Forum adopted version 1.0 of the Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly-Trusted Certificates. In February 2013 a new group, the Certificate Authority Security Council, was formed with a mission that includes promoting CA/Browser Forum standards. Membership requires adherence to CA/Browser Forum standards, the CASCs founding members consist of the seven largest certificate authorities, Comodo, Symantec, Trend Micro, DigiCert, Entrust, GlobalSign and GoDaddy. Official website Windows Root Certificate Program members, archived from the original on 2013-12-16. CAs approved for EV in Microsoft IE7 Configure Trusted Roots and Disallowed Certificates, Microsofts Internet Identity Technology Gets Certified

19.
HTTPS
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HTTPS is a protocol for secure communication over a computer network which is widely used on the Internet. HTTPS consists of communication over Hypertext Transfer Protocol within a connection encrypted by Transport Layer Security, or its predecessor, the main motivation for HTTPS is authentication of the visited website and protection of the privacy and integrity of the exchanged data. In its popular deployment on the internet, HTTPS provides authentication of the website and associated web server with one is communicating. Additionally, it provides bidirectional encryption of communications between a client and server, which protects against eavesdropping and tampering with or forging the contents of the communication. Historically, HTTPS connections were used for payment transactions on the World Wide Web, e-mail. The HTTPS uniform resource identifier, scheme has identical syntax to the standard HTTP scheme, however, HTTPS signals the browser to use an added encryption layer of SSL/TLS to protect the traffic. SSL/TLS is especially suited for HTTP, since it can provide some protection even if one side of the communication is authenticated. This is the case with HTTP transactions over the Internet, where only the server is authenticated. HTTPS creates a channel over an insecure network. This ensures reasonable protection from eavesdroppers and man-in-the-middle attacks, provided that adequate cipher suites are used, because HTTPS piggybacks HTTP entirely on top of TLS, the entirety of the underlying HTTP protocol can be encrypted. This includes the request URL, query parameters, headers, however, because host addresses and port numbers are necessarily part of the underlying TCP/IP protocols, HTTPS cannot protect their disclosure. Web browsers know how to trust HTTPS websites based on certificate authorities that come pre-installed in their software, Certificate authorities are in this way being trusted by web browser creators to provide valid certificates. The user trusts the authority to vouch only for legitimate websites. The website provides a valid certificate, which means it was signed by a trusted authority, the certificate correctly identifies the website. The user trusts that the protocols encryption layer is sufficiently secure against eavesdroppers, HTTPS is especially important over insecure networks, as anyone on the same local network can packet-sniff and discover sensitive information not protected by HTTPS. Additionally, many free to use and even paid for WLAN networks engage in packet injection in order to serve their own ads on webpages, however, this can be exploited maliciously in many ways, such as injecting malware onto webpages and stealing users private information. This is one reason why the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Tor project started the development of HTTPS Everywhere, while metadata about individual pages that a user visits is not sensitive, when combined, they can reveal a lot about the user and compromise the users privacy. Deploying HTTPS also allows the use of HTTP/2, that are new generations of HTTP, designed to reduce load times

20.
DuckDuckGo
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DuckDuckGo is an Internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo distinguishes itself from other search engines by not profiling its users, the company is based in 20 Paoli Pike, Paoli, Pennsylvania, in Greater Philadelphia, and has 21 employees. The company name originates from the childrens game duck, duck, some of DuckDuckGos source code is free software hosted at GitHub under the Apache 2.0 License, but the core is proprietary. On 21 May 2014, DuckDuckGo launched a version that focused on smarter answers. The new version added often requested features such as images, local search, auto-suggest, on 18 September 2014, Apple included DuckDuckGo in its Safari browser as an optional search engine. On 10 November 2014, Mozilla added DuckDuckGo as an option to Firefox 33.1. DuckDuckGo was founded in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg, an entrepreneur whose last venture, initially self-funded by Weinberg, DuckDuckGo is now advertising-supported but the user has the option to disable ads. The search engine is written in Perl and runs on nginx, FreeBSD, DuckDuckGo is built primarily upon search APIs from various vendors. Because of this, TechCrunch characterized the service as a search engine. At the same time, it produces its own content pages, Weinberg explained the beginnings of the name with respect to the childrens game duck, duck, goose. He said of the origin of the name, Really it just popped in my one day. It is certainly influenced/derived from duck duck goose, but other than there is no relation. DuckDuckGo has been featured on TechCrunchs Elevator Pitch Friday and it was a finalist in the BOSS Mashable Challenge, in September 2011 DuckDuckGo hired its first employee, Caine Tighe. The next month, Union Square Ventures invested in DuckDuckGo, Union Square partner Brad Burnham stated, We invested in DuckDuckGo because we became convinced that it was not only possible to change the basis of competition in search, it was time to do it. In addition, Trisquel, Linux Mint and the Midori web browser switched to use DuckDuckGo as their search engine. By May 2012, the engine was attracting 1.5 million searches a day. Weinberg reported that it had earned US$115,000 in revenue in 2011 and had three employees, plus a number of contractors. Compete. com estimated 277,512 monthly visitors to the site in August 2012, on April 12,2011, Alexa reported a 3-month growth rate of 51%

21.
Blockchain.info
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Blockchain. info is a bitcoin wallet and block explorer service. Launched in August 2011, the service provides data on recent transactions, mined blocks in the blockchain, charts on the bitcoin economy. Information from and links to the website are common in media coverage, the Blockchain. info mobile app for Android allows users to securely send and receive bitcoins and browse blockchain information. In December 2013, the company acquired ZeroBlock LLC, makers of the leading mobile bitcoin app, in July 2014, Apple reinstated the Blockchain app back into the iOS App Store. In early 2015, the company passed 3 million wallets created using their services, also in August 2015, Blockchain. info passed 4 million wallets created using their services. In May 2016, Blockchain. info announced Thunder, which claims to be an implementation of the Lightning Network, transaction volume had exceeded 100 million by August,2016. Bitcoin Coinbase BitPay Blockchain Xapo Uphold Circle List of bitcoin companies Official website

22.
The Intercept
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The Intercept is an online publication launched in February 2014 by First Look Media, the news organization created and funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The editors are Betsy Reed, Glenn Greenwald, and Jeremy Scahill, former editor Laura Poitras moved to Field of Vision, a First Look Media project focused on non-fiction films. At launch, the announced, A primary function of The Intercept is to insist upon. Our focus in this initial stage will be overwhelmingly on the NSA story. We will use all forms of media for our reporting. We will publish original source documents on which our reporting is based and we will have reporters in Washington covering reactions to these revelations and the ongoing reform efforts. We will provide commentary from our journalists, including the return of Glenn Greenwalds regular column and we will engage with our readers in the comment section. We will host outside experts to write op-eds and contribute news items, the editorial independence of our journalists will be guaranteed, and they will be encouraged to pursue their journalistic passion, areas of interest, and unique voices. We believe the prime value of journalism is that it imposes transparency and our journalists will be not only permitted, but encouraged, to pursue stories without regard to whom they might alienate. This was followed by an article containing new aerial photographs of the NSA, NRO, the report included a top-secret NSA animation showing how the agency disguised itself as a Facebook server in order to hack into computers for surveillance. The story reportedly prompted Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to phone President Obama, Zuckerberg later wrote in a blog post, Ive called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Following the report, The Intercept was criticized by WikiLeaks for withholding the name of one country whose calls were being recorded, WikiLeaks announced that the The country in question is Afghanistan. In August 2014, The Intercept reported that half of the people on the U. S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects were not connected to any known terrorist group. The watchlist reports prompted intelligence official to consider requesting an investigation into The Intercepts sources. In October 2014, it was reported that the FBI had raided the home of the source in northern Virginia. In April 2015, The Intercept reported in collaboration with Der Spiegel that a U. S. military base in Ramstein, Germany serves as the high-tech heart of America’s drone program. The Intercept cited a document and a confidential source, who said that “Ramstein carries the signal to tell the drone what to do. Without Ramstein, drones could not function, at least not as they do now

23.
The New York Times
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The New York Times is an American daily newspaper, founded and continuously published in New York City since September 18,1851, by The New York Times Company. The New York Times has won 119 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper, the papers print version in 2013 had the second-largest circulation, behind The Wall Street Journal, and the largest circulation among the metropolitan newspapers in the US. The New York Times is ranked 18th in the world by circulation, following industry trends, its weekday circulation had fallen in 2009 to fewer than one million. Nicknamed The Gray Lady, The New York Times has long been regarded within the industry as a newspaper of record. The New York Times international version, formerly the International Herald Tribune, is now called the New York Times International Edition, the papers motto, All the News Thats Fit to Print, appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. On Sunday, The New York Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine and T, some other early investors of the company were Edwin B. Morgan and Edward B. We do not believe that everything in Society is either right or exactly wrong, —what is good we desire to preserve and improve, —what is evil, to exterminate. In 1852, the started a western division, The Times of California that arrived whenever a mail boat got to California. However, when local California newspapers came into prominence, the effort failed, the newspaper shortened its name to The New-York Times in 1857. It dropped the hyphen in the city name in the 1890s, One of the earliest public controversies it was involved with was the Mortara Affair, the subject of twenty editorials it published alone. At Newspaper Row, across from City Hall, Henry Raymond, owner and editor of The New York Times, averted the rioters with Gatling guns, in 1869, Raymond died, and George Jones took over as publisher. Tweed offered The New York Times five million dollars to not publish the story, in the 1880s, The New York Times transitioned gradually from editorially supporting Republican Party candidates to becoming more politically independent and analytical. In 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential campaign, while this move cost The New York Times readership among its more progressive and Republican readers, the paper eventually regained most of its lost ground within a few years. However, the newspaper was financially crippled by the Panic of 1893, the paper slowly acquired a reputation for even-handedness and accurate modern reporting, especially by the 1890s under the guidance of Ochs. Under Ochs guidance, continuing and expanding upon the Henry Raymond tradition, The New York Times achieved international scope, circulation, in 1910, the first air delivery of The New York Times to Philadelphia began. The New York Times first trans-Atlantic delivery by air to London occurred in 1919 by dirigible, airplane Edition was sent by plane to Chicago so it could be in the hands of Republican convention delegates by evening. In the 1940s, the extended its breadth and reach. The crossword began appearing regularly in 1942, and the section in 1946

24.
I2P
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The Invisible Internet Project is a garlic routing using overlay network and darknet that allows applications to send messages to each other pseudonymously and securely. Uses include anonymous Web surfing, chatting, blogging and file transfers, the software that implements this layer is called an I2P router and a computer running I2P is called an I2P node. The software is free and open source and is published under multiple licenses, the name I2P is derived from Invisible Internet Project, which, in pseudo-mathematical notation, is represented as I²P. I2P is beta software since 2003, developers emphasize that there are likely to be bugs in the software and that there has been insufficient peer review to date. However, they believe the code is now stable and well-developed. The network itself is strictly message-based, but there is a library available to allow reliable streaming communication on top of it, although many developers had been a part of the Invisible IRC Project and Freenet communities, there are significant differences between their designs and concepts. IIP was an anonymous centralized IRC server, Freenet is a censorship-resistant distributed data store. I2P is an anonymous peer-to-peer distributed communication layer designed to run any traditional internet service, many developers of I2P are known only under pseudonyms. I2P uses 2048bit ElGamal/AES256/SHA256+Session Tags encryption and Ed25519 EdDSA/ECDSA signatures, I2P has had a stable release every six to eight weeks. Updates are distributed via I2P torrents and are signed by the release manager, since I2P is an anonymous network layer, it is designed so other software can use it for anonymous communication. As such there are a variety of tools available for I2P or in development. The I2P router is controlled through the console which is a web frontend accessed through a web browser. SAM is a protocol which allows a client application written in any programming language to communicate over I2P, by using a socket-based interface to the I2P router. BOB is a less complex app to router protocol similar to SAM Outproxy Tor plugin Any IRC client made for the Internet Relay Chat can work, several programs provide BitTorrent functionality for use within the I2P network. Users cannot connect to non-I2P torrents or peers from within I2P, i2PSnark, included in the I2P install package, is a port of the BitTorrent client named Snark. Vuze, formerly known as Azureus, is a BitTorrent client that includes a plugin for I2P and this plugin is still in an early stage of development, however it is already fairly stable. I2P-BT is a BitTorrent client for I2P that allows anonymous swarming for file sharing and this client is a modified version of the original BitTorrent 3.4.2 program which runs on MS Windows and most dialects of Unix in a GUI and command-line environment. It was developed by the known as duck on I2P in cooperation with smeghead

25.
Darknet
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A darknet is an overlay network that can only be accessed with specific software, configurations, or authorization, often using non-standard communications protocols and ports. Two typical darknet types are friend-to-friend networks and privacy networks such as Tor, the reciprocal term for an encrypted darknet is clearnet or surface web when referring to search engine indexable content. As of 2015, The Darknet is often used interchangeably with the dark web due to the quantity of services on Tors darknet. The term is often used interchangeably with the deep web due to Tors history as a platform that could not be search indexed. Mixing uses of both terms has been described as inaccurate, with some commentators recommending the terms be used in distinct fashions. Darknet was coined in the 1970s to designate networks that were isolated from ARPANET, Darknet addresses could receive data from ARPANET but did not appear in the network lists and would not answer pings or other inquiries. Journalist J. D. Lasica, in his 2005 book Darknet, Hollywoods War Against the Digital Generation, decentralized network 42 Freenet is a popular darknet by default, since version 0.7 it can run as a opennet. GNUnet can be utilised as a darknet if the F2F topology option is enabled, I2P is another overlay network that features a darknet whose sites are called Eepsites. OneSwarm can be run as a darknet for friend-to-friend file-sharing, retroShare can be run as a darknet by default to perform anonymous file transfers if DHT and Discovery features are disabled. Riffle is a client-server darknet system that provides secure anonymity, efficient computation. Syndie is software used to publish distributed forums over the networks of I2P, Tor. Tor is an anonymity network that features a darknet - its hidden services. It is the most popular instance of a darknet, tribler can be run as a darknet for file-sharing. Zeronet is open source software aimed to build a computer network of peer-to-peer users of Tor. RShare StealthNet AllPeers anoNet Turtle F2F Dark web Crypto-anarchism Private P2P Sneakernet Virtual private network Boutin, Darknet 101 - introduction for non technical people

26.
GlobaLeaks
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GlobaLeaks is an open-source, free software intended to enable secure and anonymous whistleblowing initiatives. It was developed by the Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights, the software empowers anyone, even non-technical people, to easily setup and maintain a whistleblowing platform. The project concept was initiated by Fabio Pietrosanti and shared for the first time within the hacktivist community on 15 December 2010, relevant figures in the first development are Claudio Agosti, Arturo Filastò, Michele Orrù and Giovanni Pellerano. The first prototype was announced on 6 September 2011 on the Full disclosure mailing list, asked by an interviewer on how the GlobaLeaks project began, Filastò explained, After the whole WikiLeaks Cablegate drama we decided to work on this. The idea for GlobaLeaks was born from the realization of a need for journalists to ensure the confidentiality of their sources despite an insecure network and it is designed to be used by journalists who do not have advanced computer skills but who need a secure platform to protect their sources. The software enables journalists and their sources to communicate securely, allowing a flow of data among individuals with complete security. It also enables journalists to verify sources by requesting various kinds of data, moreover, GlobaLeaks is more flexible than WikiLeaks, which is only in English, and is centralized, with a focus on events of national and international resonance. GlobaLeaks, by contrast, allows you to communicate in the language of users and is open to local issues with an impact on everyday life, Filastò commented that, We saw that there is a user base but the developers were doing it wrong. We said, ‘we are security people, we can do this better’, so two years ago we came up with an advanced prototype, Globaleaks 0.1. It was an experiment but it went quite well. We then redid it from scratch and we’re now at version 2.24, in 2012, the Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights NGO was founded in Italy. Brandon Stosh has described GlobaLeaks as an open source project aimed at creating a worldwide, anonymous, censorship-resistant, the Hermes Center NGO aims to help with the release of information on a different scale than WikiLeaks can address. Pietrosanti said in December 2013, we identified the needed for a solution or software that would enable any organization to engage in whistleblower solicitation, even at the local level. Corporations that are mandated to run an internal whistleblowing outlet to radical activists that hope to pass their materials on to publishers while using Tor to remain completely anonymous. GlobaLeaks, wrote Greenberg, aims to disperse the risk of handling sensitive material over an army of individuals rather than one group of intermediaries. ‘Some people may be like Assange, and say, OK, we’ll publish and fight and whatever, ‘But lots of people want to fight corruption without taking that much responsibility. If the risk profile of everyone who runs a leak node is reduced, and it brought the word whistleblower back into the awareness of the public But GlobaLeaks is the next logical step. Filastò emphasized that It is open source software so anybody can download it and we don’t run a whistleblowing platform ourselves but we contribute to this ecosystem by enabling other people to run successful initiatives

27.
LWN.net
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LWN. net is a computing webzine with an emphasis on free software and software for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It consists of an issue, separate stories which are published most days. Most news published daily are short summaries of articles published elsewhere, original articles are usually published weekly on Thursdays and are available only to subscribers for one week, after which they become free as well. LWN. net is part of Eklektix, Inc, LWN caters to a more technical audience than other Linux/free software publications. It is often praised for its coverage of Linux kernel internals. The acronym LWN originally stood for Linux Weekly News, that name is no longer used because the site no longer covers exclusively Linux-related topics, and it has daily as well as weekly content. Founded by Jonathan Corbet and Elizabeth Coolbaugh and published since January 1998, LWN was originally a site devoted to collecting Linux news. At the end of May 2002, LWN announced a redesigned site, among the changes was a facility for readers to post comments about stories. On July 25,2002, LWN announced that due to its inability to raise funds through donations. Following an outpouring of support from readers, however, the editors of LWN decided to continue publishing, new weekly editions of LWN are initially only available to readers who subscribe at one of three levels. After a 1-week delay, each issue becomes freely available to readers who are unable or unwilling to pay, LWN. net also purchases a number of articles from freelance authors. DistroWatch Slashdot Official website Timeline page - Also includes the sites own history at the bottom 2007 Subscribers survey, showing demographics and what sections of the site are liked

28.
The Tor Project, Inc
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The Tor Project, Inc is a Massachusetts-based 501 research-education nonprofit organization founded by computer scientists Roger Dingledine, Nick Mathewson and five others. The Tor Project is primarily responsible for maintaining software for the Tor anonymity network, the Tor Project was founded by computer scientists Roger Dingledine, Nick Mathewson and five others in December 2006. In October 2014 The Tor Project hired the public relations firm Thomson Communications in order to improve its public image, in May 2015, The Tor Project ended the Tor Cloud Service. In December 2015, The Tor Project announced that it had hired Shari Steele, former director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Roger Dingledine, who had been acting as executive director since May 2015, remained at The Tor Project as a director. Later that month, The Tor Project announced that the Open Technology Fund will be sponsoring a bug bounty program that will be coordinated by HackerOne, the program will initially be invite-only and will focus on finding vulnerabilities that are specific to The Tor Projects applications. On May 25,2016 core developer and the face of the Tor Project, Jacob Appelbaum, stepped down from his position. Over the following days, allegations of mistreatment were made public by several people. the most recent allegations are much more serious. Appelbaum has denounced the allegations as part of a strategy to damage his reputation. In July 2016 the Tor Project announced the results of an investigation led by a private investigator. Two other, unnamed individuals involved in inappropriate behavior are no longer part of the project. Initially the affair had caused a split in the wider but still close-knit privacy community, with coming to Appelbaums defense. The affair continues to be controversial, with considerable dissent within the Tor community, the Swedish government and other organizations provided the other 20%, including NGOs and thousands of individual sponsors. Dingledine said that the United States Department of Defense funds are similar to a research grant than a procurement contract. Tor executive director Andrew Lewman said that though it accepts funds from the U. S. federal government. In June 2016, The Tor Project received an award from Mozillas Open Source Support program, the award was to to significantly enhance the Tor network’s metrics infrastructure so that the performance and stability of the network can be monitored and improvements made as appropriate. In March 2011, The Tor Project received the Free Software Foundations 2010 Award for Projects of Social Benefit and its network has proved pivotal in dissident movements in both Iran and more recently Egypt. In September 2012, The Tor Project received the 2012 EFF Pioneer Award, along with Jérémie Zimmermann, in November 2012, Foreign Policy magazine named Dingledine, Mathewson, and Syverson among its Top 100 Global Thinkers for making the web safe for whistleblowers

29.
Caspar Bowden
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Caspar Pemberton Scott Bowden was a British privacy advocate, formerly chief privacy adviser at Microsoft. Styled as an independent advocate for privacy rights, and public understanding of privacy research in computer science. Having predicted US mass surveillance programmes such as PRISM from open sources, born in London, Bowden studied Mathematics at Magdalene College in Cambridge. He dropped out and worked as an independent entrepreneur in technology before joining Goldman Sachs, Bowden served on the Executive Committee of Scientists for Labour and helped shape the stance of the Labour Party on the matter. In 1997, he entered the world of privacy advocacy when he attended the Scrambling for Safety event organised by Simon Davies at the London School of Economics. He became its first director, earning the Winston award in 2000 for his work against the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. In 2002, Bowden joined Microsoft, he served as Senior Privacy Strategist for Europe, the Middle East and Africa until 2004, and became Chief Privacy Adviser for 40 countries in 2005. In 2012, prior to the Snowden leaks, he authored the Note on privacy, after Snowdens disclosures vindicated him, he criticized PRISM, stating he had suspected the existence of the project during his time at Microsoft, although he had not known it by name. In 2013, Bowden briefed the European Parliament on the FISA law, in an interview to The Guardian, he stated that he did not trust Microsoft. Instead, he advocated the use of Tor and Qubes OS, in October, he joined the Advisory Council of the Open Rights Group. Bowden died of melanoma in Southern France on 9 July 2015 at the age of 53 and he was survived by his wife Sandi. Jacob Appelbaum reported that on his deathbed, Bowden asked that we work to ensure equal protection regardless of nationality and he was posthumously awarded the The Liberty Lifetime Achievement Award and EFF Pioneer Award. The Caspar Bowden Legacy Fund for privacy advocacy and technology was founded on 12 July, with a staff comprising Bart Preneel, Claudia Diaz, Roger Dingledine. Bowden, Caspar, Closed Circuit Television For Inside Your Head, Blanket Traffic Data Retention, Privacy and surveillance, Jacob Applebaum, Caspar Bowden and more, The Guardian

30.
Ian Goldberg
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Ian Avrum Goldberg is a cryptographer and cypherpunk. He is best known for breaking Netscapes implementation of SSL, and for his role as chief scientist of Radialpoint, Goldberg is currently a professor at the School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo. He was formerly the chairman of the board on the board of directors of the Tor Project and he attended high school at the University of Toronto Schools, graduating in 1991. In 1995, he received a B. Math from the University of Waterloo in pure mathematics and he obtained a Ph. D. from the University of California, Berkeley in December 2000. His thesis was entitled A Pseudonymous Communications Infrastructure for the Internet, as a high school student, Goldberg was a member of Canadas team to the International Math Olympiad from 1989 to 1991, where he received a bronze, silver, and gold medal respectively. He was also a member of University of Waterloo team that won the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest in 1994, in 1998, Wired Magazine chose him as a member of the Wired 25. In 2011 he won the EFF Pioneer Award, in 1995, Goldberg with David Wagner discovered a flaw in the random number generator used for temporary key generation in the SSL implementation of Netscape Navigator. One of the first cryptanalyses on the WEP wireless encryption protocol was conducted by Goldberg with Nikita Borisov and David Wagner, Goldberg was a co-author of the Off-the-Record instant messaging encryption protocol. He is also the author of the Perl script included in the novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, data privacy Information privacy Ian Goldbergs personal website Ian Goldberg at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

31.
Wendy Seltzer
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Wendy Seltzer is an American attorney and a staff member at the World Wide Web Consortium. She was previously with Princetons Center for Information Technology Policy, Seltzer sits on the board of directors of the World Wide Web Foundation. A former At-large Liaison to the ICANN board of directors, she has advocated for increased transparency of the organization of, and for increased protection of, the privacy of Internet users. Previously, she was an assistant professor at the Northeastern University School of Law and Brooklyn Law School. And served on the board of directors of the Tor Project, before that, she was a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property and free speech issues. Seltzer has an A. B. from Harvard College and a J. D. from Harvard Law School and she is also a Perl programmer. People - Berkman Center for Internet & Society Wendy Seltzers blog Digital TV Liberation Front Fulbright Chair Speaker Series

32.
Vidalia (software)
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Vidalia is a discontinued cross-platform GUI for controlling Tor, built using Qt. It allows the user to start, stop or view the status of Tor, view, filter or search log messages, monitor bandwidth usage, Vidalia also makes it easier to contribute to the Tor network by optionally helping the user set up a Tor relay. Another prominent feature of Vidalia is its Tor network map, which lets the user see the location of relays on the Tor network. The name comes from the Vidalia onion since Tor uses onion routing, Vidalia is released under the GNU General Public License. It runs on any platform supported by Qt 4.2, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux or other Unix-like variants using the X11 window system

33.
Orbot
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Orbot is a free software project to provide anonymity on the Internet for users of the Android operating system. This tool is used to keep the communications of users anonymized and hidden from governments, Orbot offers anonymous browsing on Android, via Tor. Orbot on Google Play Orbot Android package at the F-Droid repository Code repository Tor on Android

Protesters outside a Scientology center on February 10, 2008, donning masks, scarves, hoods, and sunglasses to obscure their faces, and gloves and long sleeves to protect them from leaving fingerprints.